Alexander McQueen for Target

Since we highlighted his Fall '09 collection the other day, we thought we'd take a look at Alexander McQueen's line for Target. As you'd expect, there's a huge difference in the two lines.



















File this under "stating the obvious," but this is a tremendously watered-down version of the McQueen aesthetic. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It is, after all, to be expected when a designer like him develops a line for a store like Target. There's not much of a call for giant umbrella hats in most people's lives.

This is all part of a new fashion series for Target called Designer Collaborations which focuses on bringing creations from established designers to the mass market at Target prices. Not to sound cranky, but we kinda wondered why they even bothered. There's nothing terribly wrong with any of these pieces but there's really nothing about them that says "Alexander McQueen." They could have been done by any no-name designer. They're ever-so-slightly edgier than the average Target fare, we'll grant you, but they're still awfully bland to our eyes.

Not that we don't like some of the pieces. The blue dress with the gray jacket is cute and we like that pink zig-zag print, but it's mainly a bunch of '80s-inspired looks that we've seen plenty of times before and frankly, they look a little chip in a chip way.

Don't get us wrong, we're not being snobbish about Target clothes. It's a decent enough place to fill your closet with wardrobe basics, but we can't imagine why anyone who's in the market for edgy punk-inspired clothes - let alone anyone who's dying to own an Alexander McQueen - would ever head to Target in the first place. You'd be better off heading to your local H&M.


[Photos: Target.com]

Alexander McQueen Fall 2009

It's McQueen, darlings!

Style:

"Alexander McQueen may be the last designer standing who is brave or foolhardy enough to present a collection that is an unadulterated piece of hard and ballsy showmanship. The heated arguments that broke out afterward were testament to that. There were those who found his picture of women with sex-doll lips and sometimes painfully theatrical costumes ugly and misogynistic. Others—mainly young spectators who haven't been thrilled by the season's many sensible pitches to middle-aged working women—were energized by the sheer spectacle, as well as the couture-level drama in the execution of the clothes.

It was certainly meant as a last-stand fin de siècle blast against the predicament in which fashion, and possibly consumerism as a whole, finds itself. The set was a scrap heap of debris from the stages of McQueen's own past shows, surrounded by a shattered glass runway. The clothes were, for the most part, high-drama satires of twentieth-century landmark fashion: parodies of Christian Dior houndstooth New Look and Chanel tweed suits, moving through harsh orange and black harlequinade looks to revisited showstoppers from McQueen's own archive."

We're with the folks at style.com. It makes for quite a spectacle watching these looks come down the runway, but there's something a little ugly and dark about the whole thing. We're not going to go so far as to accuse him of misogyny but the whole show looks like a bad mood in clothing form. We love the houndstooth pieces and the red and black striped dress with the skirt that goes over the shoulder; we also like the prints that start off looking like houndstooth and end up being a flight of Escher birds and, because he's McQueen, there's always some interesting structural pieces to look at. Still, some of these pieces - especially the hats - are bordering on parody. Maybe that was the point.

Watch the show:

[Photos: Getty Images/WireImage - Video: YouTube]


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